Now that Black Mirror fans have had two weeks to process the fourth season of the punishingly bleak sci-fi series, Netflix has released a series of featurettes that allow viewers to take a deep dive into the making of each of the six episodes.

Wrapping up all six behind-the-scenes clips is a seventh featurette in which Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker finally answers the question of whether the individual stories in the anthology series take place in one universe.

Black Mirrorseason 4 dropped onto Netflix just before the end of 2017, which means you’re likely all caught-up on it by now, right? If so, come along with me on a journey through a list of Black Mirror cameos you may have missed!

Also: the director of the Black Mirror episode “USS Callister” says he’s more than ready to launch an entire spin-off series based around that one particular Star Trek-inspired segment.

Black Mirror, Charlie Brooker’s dark, twisted, technology-driven Twilight Zone riff, is about return to Netflix for yet another season of woe and punishment. There’s a cold cosmic justice at work in Black Mirror; a sense that any transgression, no matter how mundane, will be met with the bleakest of punishments. It can often make for an unpleasant experience. Yet Black Mirror explored exciting new possibilities last season, with the acclaimed San Junipero – an episode that revealed that hopefulness was also a possibility in the Black Mirror universe. Best of all, it was an episode that wasn’t obsessed with conveying a twisted moral – it simply used the Black Mirror premise to tell a story about two characters and the results were stunning.

Black Mirror season 4, sadly, does not have an episode that resonates as much as San Junipero did last season. The show once again continues down a dark, unrelenting path – which is to be expected, since that was the built-in methodology long before San Junipero came along. But how does Black Mirror season 4 stack up as a whole? The good news is that the latest season of Black Mirror goes off into new, unexpected directions and has fun playing around with style and form. The six episodes that occupy the latest season all vary in plot, tone, and message, which is a welcome change compared to previous seasons, which had a tendency to blur together.

It’s a brilliant — if slightly annoying — advertising campaign. Drop an individual trailer for each of the six episodes for your bleak, science-fiction anthology series, and watch us squirm as we lavish the brief clips with attention and theories. But you held out, didn’t you Netflix? You wouldn’t tell us the Black Mirror season 4 release date until well after we’d breathlessly covered each trailer.

And here we are, with a final trailer for Black Mirror and the coveted release date. And appropriately, it’s released on a “Black Friday.”

Black Mirror, the Twilight Zone-like anthology series that turns technology into more of a nightmare than a dream, is about to return to Netflix with a whole new series of anxiety-inducing episodes. Netflix has been slowly rolling out individual trailers for each episode, and the latest, for the segment Black Museum, has just arrived. Watch the latest Black Mirror season 4 trailer below.

In addition to being one of the most gorgeously shot shows on television, Charlie Brooker‘s science fiction anthology series Black Mirror is also one of the most disturbing: its episodes are often punishingly bleak, bringing its audience to the brink of despair while offering searing commentary on our relationship with (and dependence on) technology. But while it’s not exactly “feel-good” TV, it’s also a really good show that manages to attract some of the world’s most talented filmmakers and actors to work on it.

So while part of me sort of dreads the idea of watching more, I know it’ll be worth it. It always is. And it won’t be long before new episodes will be upon us. Two new Black Mirror season 4 trailers have arrived, and you can watch them below.Read More »

“We are in competition with the news,” Charlie Brooker, writer/creator/executive producer of the Netflix series Black Mirror, addressed the uncomfortable truth about the drama’s darkest themes Saturday night at New York Comic Con in front of a standing room-only audience.

I always thought it was funny when folks would remark on how far the dystopia would go on the show. To which I would always respond, “This is not unlike the world we live in.” So, I was happy to hear that Brooker agreed that some of the show’s most disturbing plot lines come from reality itself.

Find out more from the Black Mirror season 4 NYCC panel below. Read More »

Charlie Brooker‘s sci-fi anthology series Black Mirror rarely features episodes with happy endings…or any semblance of happiness at all, really. It’s often a relentlessly bleak examination of the worst impulses of humanity, all told under the umbrella of an ominous warning about how our relationship with technology may eventually be the downfall of our society. It’s not the easiest show to watch – this is about as far from comfort food television as it gets.

So, knowing that, why do we watch it at all? And what makes it so dark? That’s the subject of a new video essay, which you can check out below.Read More »

By now, you’ve probably binge-watched your way through Black Mirror Season 3 and are trying to decide which episode you enjoyed the most. While you’ve been enjoying Charlie Brooker‘s dark science fiction anthology series, you may not have noticed that all of the episodes are actually connected, albeit loosely. And no, I’m not talking about the fact the connected theme about the consequences of technology. I’m talking about actual storyline and character connections.

Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker has noted that “each episode has a different cast, a different setting, even a different reality. But they’re all about the way we live now – and the way we might be living in 10 minutes’ time if we’re clumsy.” Although recently on a Reddit Ask Me Anything, Booker admitted that they all actually “take place in the same psychological universe” with “sometimes explicit links.” Hit the jump, and we’ll explore the Black Mirror connections.Read More »

How great is Black Mirror Season 3 guys? Like many of you, I spent my weekend binge-watching the entire batch of six episode. The three stand-out episodes for me are Joe Wright‘s Nosedive with its vicious take on social media, Dan Trachtenberg‘s Playtest which is a horrifying look at the future of immersive gaming, and Owen Harris‘ San Junipero which may be the most beautiful episode of the entire series.

Black Mirror showrunners Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones appeared on Reddit yesterday and answered a bunch of fan questions, a few of which I would like to highlight. But my primary reason for this post is to share with you ringtones that Netflix created based on the Nosedive episode.